The new Scanning Electron Microscope, or SEM, recently purchased by UAB with a $550,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program, magnifies images up to 100,000x, and these images can be viewed on the wall of a classroom. The microscope is so powerful that one grain of pollen will look the size of a golf ball, and a human hair, which is roughly 0.0004 inches in diameter, will appear 30 feet across at 100,000x magnification.